Heat transfer enhancement in the direct contact melting process

In direct contact melting, it is clear that one of the factors that affect heat transfer is the size of the heat transfer surface. This indicates that the shorter the path through which the liquid between the heat transfer surface and the solid PCM is rejected outside, the thinner the liquid melt, which decreases the thermal resistance between the source and PCM. In the present work, it was investigated how the heat transfer can be promoted by machining slots on the disk-type heat transfer surface and dividing it into several sector-shaped sections, through theoretical analysis, experiments and numerical analysis. Experiments were performed varying the number of splits and the width of slots under different surface temperatures and pressures. Numerical analysis shows a good agreement with experiments. Also, it was found that the prediction equation yielded by theoretical analysis gives not only a qualitative explanation of the increase of heat flux, but also a quantitative prediction of the heat flux with adequate accuracy. Summarizing these results, the enhancement of heat transfer can apparently be achieved according to the number of splits.